Bungie Reveals Long-awaited, Genre-bending Shooter, ‘Destiny’

Posted on February 18, 2013 8:45 AM by Rob Williams

The long-awaited announcement of Bungie’s post-Halo epic has arrived, and it showcases a game that’s as ambitious as it is intriguing. According to the developer, it’s not an FPS, and it’s not an MMO, despite involving elements of each. However, given the fact that the game is experienced from the first-person, it’s what we’d call an FPS with online elements. But to describe it as such would be a disservice to the enormity of the project.

Like Halo, Destiny features a futuristic world with characters and weapons that any fan of Bungie’s previous flagship series should feel right at home with. First and foremost, the game is a shooter. You’re out to help save the world, but not as a lone hero. No – despite not being a true MMO, Destiny features persistent online elements, and the actions of the players is what helps decide the direction that the game will take. It’s not a new concept, but it’s an interesting one, because whenever the developer itself is unsure of what’s to come, that makes things pretty exciting.

It’s this mechanic that leads Bungie to call the game a “shared world shooter”. Similar to a game like Borderlands, you’ll be able to sync up with friends to go kick ass with, but you won’t simply find them lingering around in the world like you would with an MMO. Likewise, because of its online elements, it seems that the weather, time of day and other factors will remain the same across the game world for everyone at any given time – even if you’re off playing by yourself.

Bungie doesn’t want Destiny to simply remain a game that you turn on whenever you feel like playing. Rather, it wants you to become immersed in it. It’ll offer features to use online away from the game, and on your mobile phone. You can sync up with friends while on-the-go and then join forces when you get home and log in. Perhaps we’ll even see the ability to swap loot when out of game. If one thing’s for certain, Bungie wants you to be thinking about Destiny a lot.

Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of Destiny is the fact that Bungie claims its story would take 10 years to tell. If the interest in the series lasts that long, then it stands to reason that we would see the game (and expansions) last for 10 years. While not atypical for an MMO, it is for a game like this.

As interesting and exciting as Destiny is, though, it looks like PC gamers will be sitting on the side-lines once again. It’s a pity, too, given that this game seems perfect for the platform.

Destiny Developer Video Documentary

A release date has not been announced, but it’s expected that we’ll see the game launch at the end of the year, or early 2014. For further reading, I’d recommend checking out the coverage at Kotaku, Joystiq and Shacknews.

Kayden

The reason Bungie isn’t bringing it to the PC is because no one uses a keyboard or mouse in FPS games anymore……What ever that team is smoking, they should share.

http://www.facebook.com/deathspawner Rob Williams

I know you’re being sarcastic but the mere thought of being forced to use a gamepad for a game like this would keep me away even if it WERE for the PC. Gamepads are wicked for platformers and racing games, but total crap for FPS games.

Kayden

No, I’m not kidding a Bungie Rep said that. Sad but true, here is what Jason Jones said:

“We did a bunch of ambitious things on Halo deliberately to reach out to people. We limited players to two weapons, we gave them recharging health, we automatically saved and restored the game – almost heretical things to first-person shooters at the time. We made the game run without a mouse and keyboard. And now nobody plays shooters the way they used to play them before Halo ’cause nobody wants to.”

http://www.facebook.com/deathspawner Rob Williams

That’s the kind of tunnel-vision you experience when all you deal with are consoles, apparently.

http://techgage.com/ Marfig

Jason Jones is the man behind Myth: The Fallen Lords, one of the best strategy games for the PC ever made. When Bungie, was revered. He did come a long way from a respected programming wiz kid to one of the biggest industry douches. This last statement of his is actually pretty mild compared to many other things he said in the recent past.

What I find even more amusing than the keyboard nonsense on that statement, is the fact he actually believes that Halo changed the way people play FPS games and that it introduced never-seen-before ideas into the genre, like recharging health or automatic saves. Thankfully the computer gaming market may be dumb in many ways, but has an encyclopedic memory. And he was immediately contradicted.

http://www.facebook.com/deathspawner Rob Williams

No kidding. Halo changed the way people played only in the fact that it moved them from a KB and mouse to a gamepad. Some people just are not PC gamers, and that’s fine. That doesn’t make a gamepad “better”. Pit a gamepad against a gamer using a KB + mouse and see who comes out on top.